Sun and Apple almost made the nasty

Not only did Apple and Sun almost "become one," they tried it three times and …

The revelations about the relationship between Sun and Apple in their heydays is not unlike a few of my experiences with girls in high school. At an event at the Computer History Museum, four of Sun's founding fathers were in attendance and, unexpectedly, the conversation just kept coming back to the subject of Apple and Sun's attempts to woo them over to their house to "study:"

At one point during the discussion, questioner John Gage, a longtime Sun staffer, asked McNealy about Sun's "three attempts" to buy Apple. McNealy dodged the question... Moments later, Joy–a Unix god and venture capitalist on the side–dragged the conversation back to Apple, seeming to want to make a confession.

Joy confessed that there were six "very close" encounters between the two companies. Sun attempted to affect the direction of Apple on file systems, computer processors, and more:

"As far as I know we also almost bought Apple once," Joy said. "We almost merged with Apple two other times.

And now for your Steve Jobs moment of Zen:

"We went over to Steve's house, and he was sitting under a tree with no shoes on reading How to make a Nuclear Bomb," McNealy said.